Hello all! Well March has turned out to be quite a busy month and I'm not exactly sure with what! :) Sometimes it just seems like time flies by without you realizing it eh?
The month started off with me getting a house ready for some new missionaries arriving. I had to make sure the house was clean, dishes and linens ready, make sure the appliances work (order a gas bottle), and just pretty much make sure the house is liveable! :) This is called being a mission mate for the newbies, we had mission mates prep our house before we got here and it's a service that all missionaries living here perform at some time.
Mid-march brought about conference time. We had a guest speaker (Bill Meerstra) from Canada. The topic was "Entitlement" and boy were we ever convicted. You don't really realize how often your sense of entitlement comes into play on a daily basis. Not to point fingers, but I see this attitude of entitlement very clearly in my 5 years old! I know, it's crazy, somehow she must have been exposed to this while outside of our home...cause that would never happen in my house! :) Yeah right, I'm pretty sure I've taught her much about feeling entitled. Often we feel that God somehow "owes" us stuff because we've become His followers. For example, we feel that He needs to answer our prayers affirmatively, or we feel that because we've given up so much for Him or sacrificed so much for Him then we are "entitled" to have Him work on our behalf. The big question of the weekend was "If God does nothing else for me my entire life (besides saving me by having Jesus die for me) is it still enough?" Read that question again, cause it's a doozy. It's definitely not easy to answer, cause automatically we would say "of course!, salvation is all I need!". Is it? Is it? :) We often don't live like it is, do we. In my heart I often find myself bartering with God, I've done this for you, I've left family, friends all to serve you...I deserve this from you, you owe me (what?) Who am I talking to, eh? What a sense of entitlement I have and that's not all the examples I could think of.
One tribal update we received recently was the Biem people group here in PNG. One of the problems facing our missionaries there was illiteracy in the Biem people. How were these people going to read the scriptures that were translated into their language if they couldn't read? So the missionaries started having literacy classes and the first class has now graduated and the whole tribe is very excited about these literacy classes. More and more people are coming to learn to read and the ones who can now read are thrilled that they can write their own names, teach their children, and read the scriptures that have been translated.
Here’s a loose English version of Genesis 1:1 in Biem: “So so far before, in the time that God made the land and sky, He was there and he spoke and land and sky they just became. He didn’t make them with anything. With just words he made them.”
Pretty neat to see how the translation comes out in the end eh? It has to be culturally specific and significant to each individual tribe which I just find amazing. The work being done out here around us is so encouraging to us and so huge! I'm amazed at what God is doing in the hearts of the tribal people out here in PNG. This is what we're here for! :)
Thanks so much for all of your support and prayers. We truly feel blessed to have so many friends and family back home thinking of us and encouraging us and praying for us. You guys are awesome!
Love, Clinton & Rolanda
